1/2 écu d'or à la couronne - Louis XI

Louis XI inherited a kingdom still recovering from decades of English occupation and internal civil war, and his monetary policy reflected his broader obsession with centralized control. The écu à la couronne series, of which this half-piece forms part, was among the first systematic attempts to standardize French royal gold coinage after the chaos of the Hundred Years' War had left mints issuing at wildly inconsistent fineness levels.

The 1461–1474 window covers the period before Louis's monetary ordinance of 1475 revised the écu standard. Pieces struck at provincial mints during this span can show subtle die differences documented across the Gadoury and Duplessy references — the spread across four catalog entries here reflects genuine variety in workshop output, not cataloging redundancy.